by For most of us, vegetarian success meant surviving homeschooling or making a good loaf of sourdough.
However, Derry Green has turned a way to entertain his children in the back garden during those balmy days of 2020 into a glamping business which now turns over £1.4m a year and makes annual profits of £800,000.
When Covid hit, the 41-year-old entrepreneur saw his transport business deteriorate overnight and his income plummeted.
“I was mainly helping people move to Spain, so all of a sudden all my bookings were canceled because our customers couldn’t travel,” says Green. “I had no income, but I couldn’t have a pity party all day. I needed a distraction.”
So he used his last £6,000 in savings to build a pod called The Hideout, in the garden of his former turf cutter’s home in Skelmersdale, near Wigan, Lancashire where he lives with his two children, Sophie, now 11, and Noah, nine.
He put a double bedroom and a sofa bed into the pod to camp in with the children.
“We moved 10 arches onto a 3.5m by 2.5m shed to create a skeleton like whalebones,” he says, “then we added heat and a wet room with a shower. We just kept building a little bit more every day.”
Most of the materials were rescued from Facebook Marketplace.
“I tried to get everything for free or as close,” he says. And much of Green’s practical skills were acquired from YouTube videos and friends.
“I had to pay people for things like power, water and sorting waste, but I learned plumbing and construction. Someone showed me how to do the basic work of laying water pipes to connect to the septic tank.”
He also quickly learned the power of social media marketing.
“I always saw Facebook as a place to share photos of what the kids and I were doing every day, but by the end of the lockdown my story had gone viral. People said the Villa pods reminded them of Love Island, and thousands of people emailed me asking if they could come on holiday here,” he says.
“I was surprised that people wanted to stay in my garden. I never saw it as starting a business. I started a project. The children were five and seven, it was locked early and I lost everything. But then I had to quickly learn how to run a hospitality business.”
Green’s house was more ripe for the business to rise, however, because at the back of his garden is an area of four acres of woodland that came with the house when he bought it nine years ago.
Used as a dumping ground for old mattresses, he cleared the site, submitted a planning application for his business Glamping Garden Secret in early 2021 and is building his 13th – and last – a pod on the site.
“Each one is more elaborate than the last,” he says, with the latest models taking 10-12 weeks to build and costing up to £100,000 each.
The Wildernesse Spa, for example, includes underfloor heating, an ice plunge pool, a wood-burning sauna and an outdoor bar. Extending from its original design of a soup shed, The Wonderland is a seven-metre high igloo-like dome, and coming soon is The Luxe with an outdoor cinema.
When it launched The Luxe in advance, it was booked for 18 months in 47 minutes – and it hasn’t even been built yet.
“We generated £170,000 in bookings, which meant £65,000 in cash. The unit will cost £50,000 to build, so we are making a profit with it before it is open. We can scale the business without needing any external funding,” says Green.
His appearance on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den in January this year – prompting Deborah Meaden to invest £100,000 in the business for a 5pc stake – has also seen demand for his back garden glampsite boom.
“Before the show we had to turn over 1,000 inquiries a week. Now we’re turning over 6,000 a week,” says Green.
He is also sifting through hundreds of inquiries from people who want to partner with him to open Secret Gardens overseas.
So what is the secret to their success? Highly Instagrammable design plays a big role, and Green’s girlfriend, Chelsea Roberts, 24 – who he met when she came to stay in one of his pods as an early customer – drives the company’s social media, which has reached 10.2 million people per company. month.
It is enough to ensure that people will want to go on holiday in the north west of England even on a wet Wednesday in winter. “We create content that is relevant to different groups,” says Green.
“We target couples and families, but also school mums who want to get away from the family for a night or two, or dads who come with their friends.”
He learned, however, that looks are not everything.
“At first, I thought customers were coming because the units are beautiful, but I realized it was because of the experience you provide,” he said.
“It’s about being outside, on the lighted woodland paths, watching the deer, sitting in a warm tent, toasting with a marshmallow. I see us as an experience business that also offers accommodation.”
It also charges a flat rate throughout the year (£265-£310, depending on the pod), so parents who can only come during the school holidays are not penalised.
“People in the travel industry are taking advantage of that festival or that famine and I can prove that it doesn’t have to be done that way,” he says. “People want to spend their money somewhere that fits their morals,” he says, noting that he tries to source all building materials and equipment within 15 miles of town, whenever possible.
“We can’t do that with the hot tubs, but the guy who makes them in Lithuania is now selling thousands of them all over the world because he’s connected to our audience,” says Green.
“We’ve done that with a lot of smaller suppliers to boost their business. A lighting company we used just did [the former Brazilian footballer] Ronaldo’s home in Barcelona after seeing us on social media.”
Now with his full pod quotient at Green’s back garden, he’s branching out to even bigger things. With a £1.6m bridging loan from property lender Le Chéile, he has bought a huge stately pile called La Mancha Hall in Halsall, where he aims to have the first part of the business – glamping pods set among 10 -acres of formal landscaping. and woodland – in full swing by summer.
Over the next three years, the nearly 300-year-old Grade II-listed house will be restored to its original grandeur as a result of this £5m project, which will become boutique hotel accommodation and a venue for weddings and filming make his outhouses.
“Inside, the eight-bedroom main house has not been used since the 1970s – all shagpile carpets and avocado bathrooms – and the public has never been able to visit the house or the gardens before,” a says Green.
“But by chance I found a rare book from the early 1900s, when the house went up for sale with 1,400 acres at the time, which shows the original layout of each room. It’s a great piece of history and I’m sure we’ll have a lot to learn.”
This is undoubtedly just the beginning for Glas.
“It’s as if my 12-year-old self had found my perfect job, designing holes in the woods,” he says. And he’s helping many others rediscover their inner child at the same time.
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